Using Engagement Metrics

In our Data School tutorial “Identifying Engagement Metrics”, we dive into the subject of customer success and dig further into the topic of customer engagement. Customer engagement is the process of actively building, maintaining, and managing relationships with customers in order to keep them coming back for more business. In that tutorial, we identify a few key customer engagement metrics to track.

In our second tutorial about customer engagement, “Measuring Engagement Metrics”, we take our engagement metrics analysis one step further. Each metric selected in “Identifying Engagement Metrics” is broken down into the components needed to actually measure or calculate it. We also provide useful information about tools that can be used to easily measure engagement metrics.

In this tutorial, we’re going to wrap up our engagement metrics analysis and bring the idea of customer engagement full circle. While identifying and measuring metrics are both important steps in understanding your customer engagement, being able to use the metrics is equally important. Understanding what each metric tells you about your customers is crucial, and you can use that knowledge to better your business overall.

How Do I Use Customer Engagement Metrics?

Though it should be obvious, the goal of customer success, encompassing customer engagement, is to ensure your customers are having success while using your product. When customers are successful with your product, they’re more likely to keep using it. Ultimately, customer success directly leads to customer retention which is an important aspect of a strong long-term business. You might be thinking, “How do I know that my customers are successful?” The answer leads back to using our previously explained customer engagement metrics. We’ve split up those engagement metrics as a means of measuring three factors of customer success: customer happiness, adoption, and trend.

Happiness: Customer happiness is a way of looking at the positive side of customer satisfaction. Measuring your customers’ happiness can give you insight into whether or not they’re getting what they want from using your product. The happier the customer, the more they will use your product. To track happiness, use these customer engagement metrics:

Net Promoter Score (NPS) – a way to measure how likely a customer is to recommend your service to someone else.

No-Contact Rate – the percentage of customers who experienced issues with your product but did not try or gave up trying to contact you.

Number of Customer Complaints – a count of complaints submitted by customers.

Adoption: Customer adoption refers to how well customers respond to your product and integrate it into their daily use. Measuring your customers’ adoption can give you insight into how your product is working for them. The more a customer adopts your product, the more likely it is that they’re having success with it. This, in turn, increases the chances of them using it for a longer period of time. To track adoption, use these customer engagement metrics:

Activity Time – the total time a customer spends actively using your product.

Visit Frequency – how often customers return to your product.

Number of Core Actions – a count of actions performed by users that are considered the basis of your product.

Stickiness – a measure of how often your “regular” customers return during a period of time.

Trend: Customer trend refers to patterned customer behaviors over time. Analyzing customer trends can give direct insight into overall customer success with your product. If behavior is trending toward good results, then customers are most likely having success with your product and will want to continue using it. Looking at trends with these customer engagement metrics is beneficial:

Number of Active Users – a count of the number of unique users that actively use your product.

Conclusion

Though identifying and measuring customer engagement metrics are vital steps in the customer success process, it wouldn’t be complete without being able to utilize those metrics. Customer engagement metrics should be used to ensure customer success with your product. Success can be attributed to customer happiness and adoption, as well as recognized by looking at customer trends. When working with customer engagement metrics, it’s important to track only the metrics that are meaningful to your business’s goals and definition of success.

About Bryn Burns

Hi! I'm Bryn Burns. I am a current senior at Virginia Tech pursuing degrees in Statistics and Mathematics. Data science and visualization are two things I'm very passionate about, as well as working with numbers and helping people learn. I'm thrilled to share my knowledge here at The Data School!